A rotary dresser is a rotating dresser having diamond abrasive grains implanted in and fixed to an outer circumferential surface. The rotary dresser is a tool to perform dressing while transferring the shape of the dresser to a grinding wheel or a superabrasive grinding wheel such as a WA grinding wheel or a GC grinding wheel by pressing the rotating rotary dresser against the grinding wheel. Since the rotary dresser can significantly shorten the dressing time, has high reproducibility of dressing accuracy, can easily procure high-degree automation, and can reduce the grinding cost, the rotary dresser has been widely used.
An electroforming rotary dresser is a dresser having diamond abrasive grains fixed using metal through an electroplating method. The electroforming rotary dresser can inverse the shape of an accurately finished matrix to the surface with no change, and therefore it is possible to produce products having a fine shape with high accuracy. For the electroforming rotary dresser, diamond abrasive grains are loaded onto the inner circumferential surface of the matrix, a layer of the diamond abrasive grains is preliminarily fixed to the inner circumferential surface of the matrix through electroplating, the remaining diamond abrasive grains are removed, and electroforming is additionally performed through electroplating, thereby fixing the diamond abrasive grains. Therefore, a layer of the diamond abrasive grains are densely loaded, and the degree of concentration becomes extremely high. Therefore, the intervals between the abrasive grains become narrow, the grinding wheel is not easily scratched, the abrasive grains form a flat state with a few scratch edges on the surface of the grinding wheel, and consequently, the grinding resistance becomes high, which has been a problem.
Therefore, several methods have been tested so far to adjust the degree of concentration of the diamond abrasive grains in the rotary dresser and to improve the performance. Patent Literature 1 discloses a technique in which an adhesive is applied to a wall surface of a matrix, a net having a mesh somewhat larger than the grain diameter of diamond abrasive grains is attached to the matrix, and the diamond abrasive grains are scattered onto the mesh in the net, thereby arraying and fixing the diamond abrasive grains in a lattice shape at intervals at which appropriate gaps are present between the grain diameters. In the above-described technique, only the diamond abrasive grains that have been inserted in the mesh are adhered and held through the adhesive, and other diamond abrasive grains are not adhered. Therefore, the diamond abrasive grains are regularly arrayed at a desired distribution density so that one diamond abrasive grain is present in one mesh.